Ever since its discovery by Mukhtar Ali Isani in 1986, the poem
believed to be Phillis Wheatley's last publication during her
lifetime, "An Elegy on Leaving," has struck scholars as displaying
an "atypical weariness and lack of hope" (Isani, "Elegy on Leaving"
611). From its opening lines, the poem evokes a scene of unwelcome
departure from a pastoral haven:

FAREWEL! ye friendly bow'rs, ye streams adieu,
I leave with sorrow each sequester'd seat:
The lawns, where oft I swept the morning dew,
The groves, from noon-tide rays a kind retreat.

(Wheatley, Complete Writings 102-03)

John C. Shields, in his survey of Wheatley's "employ[ment] of
[the] subversive pastoral," identifies it as "one of her bleakest,
for she appears to bid adieu to the entire world of poetic
creativity" ("Phillis Wheatley's Subversive Pastoral" 632, 646).
Vincent Carretta, in his remarkable new biography of Wheatley, sees
in the poem a "fittingly poignant farewell to more than just a life
of seclusion" (189). Those who mark the propinquity of its
publication to Wheatley's death—it was published only months before
in the July 1784 issue of London's Arminian
Magazine—welcome its uncharacteristic directness of pastoral
sentiment; it symbolically sounds a mournful endnote for her
tragically abbreviated life and work. This elegiac mood pervades
most scholarly discussions of the poem, and few other substantive
analyses exist. Indeed, when compelled to discuss its literary
merits in his introductory essay, Isani asserts that its
"importance is mainly historical" and admits that the poem "does
not escape the conventions of [Wheatley's] day" ("Elegy on Leaving"
612).

The sensitivity of previous scholars to these differences in
tone and quality between this poem and the rest of Wheatley's
oeuvre is better explained, however, by new evidence that proves
that the work is not Wheatley's after all. Rather, it is the work
of English poet Mary Whateley (1738-1825), who included it as
"Elegy on Leaving" in her 1764 collection Original Poems on
Several Occasions (see Figure 1). Whateley was the
daughter of a gentleman farmer of Beoley village in Worcestershire.
Though her mother was "barely literate" and her father owned only a
"parcel" of "old" books, her close friendship with the daughter of
the local vicar gave her access to an Oxonian's more substantial
library (Messenger 15). Moreover, the location of her village in
the Midlands brought her to the attention of William Shenstone, a
landscape gardener and poet known for the pastoral mode, who acted
as a mentor. She also came to the attention of poet and translator
John Langhorne, who wrote the prefatory poem to her first book and
commended her writing in the Monthly Review. These two
men introduced her to additional literary connections and assisted
her in the publication of her verse. In her early twenties, she
moved to Walsall in Staffordshire, where she was to "keep house for
her brother Henry" (Messenger 24-25). Though she was
initially reluctant to move, she grew to appreciate the town's
artistic and intellectual community. After returning to Beoley for
a period and publishing her book, she came back to Walsall and
married a local curate, John Darwall. Marriage and motherhood
slowed but did not end her literary career; a widowed Mary Whateley
Darwall published a two-volume work of poetry in 1794, the
similarly titled Poems on Several Occasions. According
to her biographer, Ann Messenger, the undated "Elegy on Leaving"
was undoubtedly composed in 1759/60 as it "obviously chronicles her
feelings about having to trade [the] rural peace" of Beoley for the
more populous Walsall. Messenger admires the poem, which she deems
"conventionally and simply pastoral," more for its insight into
Whateley's emotions than for its art (24-25, 65), an opinion that
resonates with many Wheatley scholars' assessments of the
mis-ascribed work. The poems themselves are identical, with the
exception of occasional changes in orthography, punctuation,
capitalization, and italicization.

The source of the current misattribution of Whateley's poem as
Wheatley's lies in the eighteenth century. In identifying "An Elegy
on Leaving" as a "New Poem by Phillis Wheatley," Isani follows the
Arminian Magazine. Between February and
December...

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